Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria

Posted: 09/21/06

The 6-year wait for a sequel to one of the best RPG’s on the original Playstation is finally over. Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria from Square Enix for the PS2 is a difficult and lengthy game built for loyal and determined role-playing adventurers. However it’s weak character development and persistent leveling demands may tire out even the most hardcore experience collectors.

The saga begins several hundred years before the first Valkyrie Profile. You play as a young princess named Alicia who’s been possessed by a Valkyrie named Silmeria. Her split personality leads her kingdom and family to banish her forever. It’s only then that she discovers she’s destined to prevent a catastrophic war by finding a precious orb to restore peace.

What made the original so appealing was the simple premise of building up an army for a grand battle at the end of the game, all the while seamlessly integrating new characters and their stories along the way. But with Profile 2, players slowly discover their purpose through many bulky cutscenes, which sounds exciting except very few of them allow for any development in the characters you meet. Just like in the first Valkyrie, you’ll come across dozens of souls to join your party, but all the background information on these characters is only revealed in a small profile window in the pause menu. So while they’re significant to your progression in the game, their contribution to the plot is zilch.

Unlike the 2D back-and-forth skirmishes from the PS1 Valkyrie, battles now take place in 3D where both you and your enemies roam freely. When you or an enemy attacks, the screen shifts to a side view where you time your party’s attacks by pressing the face button corresponding to each party member. Good timing will break an opponent’s guard and can unleash massive combos for a huge amount of damage, just like the original.

The new 3D approach to fighting brings two new elements of strategy that make battles a little more complex, and overall more fun. First, you’ll now need to manage your actions carefully as each move, from attacks to item usage consumes your Attack Point meter located on the bottom of the screen. To replenish it, you’ll need to move around or simply click and hold the L3 button. Second, the amount of damage dealt to an enemy is dependent upon your position on the battlefield. More often than not, attacking from behind is the best way to go. Unlike the stat based combat from the Valkyrie 1, the new 3D space makes victory feel more like a result of your own skill.

When you’re not battling, you’re navigating through dungeons and towns like in any side scrolling game. Similar to Lenneth’s ice crystals in Valkyrie Profile, Alicia can fire photons at enemies to freeze and move them. The big difference this time though is a second photon will swap your position with the enemy’s, creating some tricky puzzle solving that requires more brain power than the original.

In Valkyrie 1, players were forced to accomplish tasks using a specific number of visits to towns or dungeons, but in Silmeria you now have the freedom to explore locations as often or for as long as you’d like. While this gives you more freedom, and you don’t have the constant pressure from of a timer looming over your head, there’s a catch. You’re only allowed access to locations you’ve already visited or that you just unlocked, making Valkyrie 2 a more linear experience than you might think.

And get ready to fight the same enemies over and over again, but this isn’t because the same enemies appear in different areas. You’ll often need to back track to previously visited areas to raise your party’s levels in order to advance further in the game, and experience points only go to party members active in battle. If you want to raise anyone else’s level you’ll need to constantly swap characters in and out. This is crucial because when a party member reaches a certain level you’ll have the option of releasing them and being rewarded with heavy stat increases for the rest of your party.

This plot-restricting level requirement has been done many times before. Obviously you want to be powerful enough to face the challenges ahead of you, but it makes the overall quest a poorly paced, stop-and-go gameplay experience. To make matters worse, you can only move left and right through each area, so it’s not like you’re revisiting environments you‘ve been to before, you’re crossing the exact same path.

Thankfully, these environments look gorgeous. For a PS2 RPG, Silmeria looks and sounds excellent. The orchestral score is even better than the original and the characters, while not necessarily original in design, have some of the highest detail the PS2 has ever seen. Unfortunately Silmeria’s cutscenes couldn’t match this level of quality. Aside from the decent voice acting, none of the dialogue is synched correctly. But even more awkward are the constant dead pauses in dialogue, almost as if the game is loading the next character’s sound bite. It may be different if there was music behind these moments, but nearly every cutscene is only supported by ambient sound effects.

Although you don’t get the handcrafted artwork from the original, and some might view the side-scrolling design in this day and age to be a bit archaic, it’s not hard to notice the great amount of detail put into each setting. From forests to caves to old towns, it’s all rendered in 3D and the subtle animation that causes wind to blow in the background or fire to burn in the foreground makes experiencing Silmeria worth the irritating grind.

Dedicated PS2 RPG veterans holding out for Final Fantasy XII won’t want to miss Valkyrie Proflie 2: Silmeria, and fans of the original PS1 release will appreciate the visual and tangible upgrades to the graphics and control. Although the time constraints from the original are now replaced with a more linear journey, the 3D battle system adds more strategy to combat and the side scrolling elements no longer feel like an after-thought. Just prepare yourself for lengthy leveling interruptions and very little attachment to the characters.

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